New Public Administration

This book is generally about public administration and particularly about new public administration.

New public administration is a product of the late 1960s
and the 1970s, an era characterized by Dwight Waldo as a
"time of turbulence." During this period, I was teaching
public administration in the Maxwell Graduate School of
Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. My
courses were budgeting, policy analysis, and personnel; my
job was to prepare graduate students for careers in public
service. My students were hostile and angry; they were a
product of the challenges and protests of the time -- the
turbulence. They claimed that public administration was
irrelevant, out of touch with current critical issues and
problems. They were right. It was in this context that I was
involved with many others in the development of what has
come to be known as new public administration.

Although the general context of the development of new
public administration was important, several events influenced the emergence of this "movement." First, most of
the major theorists, authors, and leaders in the field of
public administration were invited to a conference in late 1967 sponsored by the American Academy of Political and
Social Science. The chairman of the conference, James C.
Charlesworth, described the purposes and mood of the
conferees: "To make a bold and synoptic approach to the
discipline of public administration and ... to measure the
importance of public administration in the broad philosophic
context."fwrd1

The lengthy conference report concludes: (1) Administrative agencies are policy makers. (2) The policy administration dichotomy is out of date. (3) It is difficult to define
public administration and to mark its boundaries. (4) There
is a big difference between public administration and busi-

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